Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Stop calling yourself that!
And now in the "what took you so long?" department, a few citizens of the Greek island of Lesbos is suing a gay group over the use of the word "lesbian." Um....sorry Lesbos, but I think you're a bit late out of the gate on this one. This is just too funny.

Today's digression:
I object (as if that would have any effect) on the hijacking of certain pieces of art and music to sell things. The two that bother me most are the one that uses the likeness of a Van Gogh self-portrait to sell eye drops and the reworking of "Ode to Joy" into "Ode to the Manwich." Yes, I'm sure Beethoven had meat sandwiches in mind when he wrote that. How proud he'd be to know that his genius is now being used to sell crap.

Every so often you'll hear a favorite song being used to sell, say, a car, and you'll think to yourself "no, not that one!" And you feel angry at the company that has conscripted something for which you have good associations because now instead of happily singing along you're now going to think "Lexus" whenever you hear it. But I think it's worse to take something that most people think of a great art and use it to hawk products we don't need to people who don't need them. Especially poor Van Gogh, who was not a commercial success in his lifetime -- now he's a posthumous commercial spokesman. Poor Vincent!

No comments: